Quote:
Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks
It may interest you to know that these days some sites won't even take a PAID ad from an author unless they have X number of reviews. This makes the problem worse IMO. I ran across two sites while looking for a place to take out an ad. One of them required my book be 99 cents and have 10 reviews with an average star of...I think it was 4 stars. That part I don't remember. Most of my short stories and anthologies are 99 cents, but guess what? They are the least likely to generate reviews from either bloggers or purchasers. So my options are to lump it (hey, I can take my money elsewhere!) or go hunt down people and mug them for reviews. Some authors decide that "I need ten reviews" means, "I will get my Aunt Joan and Uncle Bill and so on" to add reviews. The other site required even more reviews.
One of the GR groups I'm on just put a new policy in place in order for a book to be nominated for group read: 100 reviews.
I look at numbers like that and just shake my head. Some authors will go out there and get 100 reviews just to "make the grade."
I don't know what the answer is to the review problem. The 'purchased' thing helps, but reviewers (blogs) rarely purchase the books they cover whether it is from a trad pub or an indie. I am happy to send a file to review blogs, but that doesn't guarantee a review at all (and it shouldn't). But "gifting" your book via Amazon doesn't work either. Some blogs won't accept that because it then looks like they bought the book when they didn't and some blogs, I hate to admit, exchange the gift book for something else instead...
|
I have a beef with GR. GR is allowing reviews of books before they are published and lots of people are putting in stars and other crap without having read the book. It skews the ratings big time for a book that's not been read. The staff there don't give a crap about it. I've mentioned it and they don't care. They also don't care about eBook pages. They feel that pages should be what the publisher lists and that's the pBook pages which is wrong. ADE is not using pBook pages.
As for having to get a bunch of reviews before you can list your book is just wrong. That's just telling the author to get any old review weather it be real or not.
I also think if someone wants to get read, make the first book free because a lot of times, we (the consumer) is not going to pay for a totally unknown.
Also, one other thing that needs to be done well is the cover. If it's lousy, we might not even get to reading the description.